TIFF deals buzz: 2012 could be a hot year for documentaries

Things could be looking up for documentary films at the Toronto International Film Festival this year. Thom Powers, a programmer at TIFF, told Realscreen he’s predicting that quite a few docs will secure distribution deals at this year’s fest. While last year was a notably “quieter year” for film sales at the festival, a number of titles have incited serious pre-festival buzz, with some, including The Secret Disco Revolution, from Toronto’s Jamie Kastner, already picked up by distributors. Among the slew of docs expected to score deals are Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (produced by revered masters Werner Herzog and Errol Morris) and Bartholomew Cubbins’s Artifact. Notably absent from the Realscreen list is the Snoop Lion vehicle Reincarnated—maybe the execs weren’t quite as impressed by the trailer as we were. [Realscreen]